There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do

Much of what we did Friday night at Motor City Fur[ry] Con amounted to reconnecting. There are a bunch of people we see basically only at furry cons, since we don't know where the Michigan Furries organize their gettogethers anymore. We hear rumors that there's fursuit bowling in Lansing every month but who knows what day or time or anything? (The old organization site vanished in a fit of drama while we were busy for a couple weeks and didn't notice.) So since we had missed the Insects SIG we spent time instead in con suite, talking with Shouda about what he's been up to and seeing Pakrat and how he's been and all that. Which is to say, everyone's doing well, at least as far as they want to report.

The only big event we did get to Friday night was the Foxes and Peppers show, the concert starring Pepper Coyote and Fox Amoore. We'd been to it the previous year and enjoyed. This year wasn't less fun. It had an addition in a bass guitarist who impressed bunny_hugger by being there and supporting the show without upstaging anybody. I mean, it was good playing, but the guitarist drew attention from us for not drawing attention, if that's a logically coherent thing. We don't know the story of the performer there. Sorry I can't offer it. Maybe they just needed a spot more music. This was the clean or all-ages or non-drunk show, depending on just how they remembered to describe their own concert.

Somewhere around here we established that the charity was not the same as last year's. Last year had fundraised for an exotic-animal care and performance organization that just kept feeling more dubious the more I thought about it when I finally started thinking about it. They had a different group this time, Pets For Vets. It's a group that tries matching animals to veterans who need the companionship. (My understanding is that these are not as trained therapy animals, just, you know, regular animals that fit well with the veterans' needs.) You might have seen something about it if you remember a briefly viral news story about a woman who brought dogs to the show not knowing it was a furry convention.

I believe we poked around the game rooms, both arcade and board, where we mostly established that they had games. We talked with the folks running the rooms about the challenges getting games in and set up and running them, and mourned once more that we don't really have a car that would let us bring our Tri-Zone pinball game to cons.

And we spent a lot of time in con suite, hanging out and sampling the beer and ale and, for me, going around drumming up votes for my Raccoons And Procyonids SIG. As with last year at AnthrOhio I surveyed people on the question ``Trash Panda: Yes Or No?'' and had a surprisingly good time going up to strangers and asking them to fill out a very silly little vote for no real purpose. I think it did some good in letting people know there was a Raccoons And Procyonids SIG and that they were invited to attend.

I believe there was a dance scheduled for after midnight, but we weren't up to staying out quite that late. We would go in, get some rest, and be ready for the fursuit parade in the morning instead.

Trivia: Beethoven was unable to handle a razor safely, nor to sharpen a pencil without help. He also never learned to dance in time.
Source: Beethoven: The Universal Composer, Edmund Morris.

Currently Reading: The History of the Calculus and its Conceptual Development, Carl B Boyer.